No Substitute
by ProcurerFaith
Summary: Don sits beside Leo's body, broken by the loss of his brother. While there, he tells Leo some home truths - even if he can no longer hear them. - If anyone remembers the original summary, please let me know -


_**No Substitute**_

_**Disclaimer: **__**TMNT was created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. TMNT belongs to Mirage Studios. I am not making any money from this fic. **_

_Author's note: Bit angsty here, ladies and gentlemen. This drabble is dedicated to Miss Kay – thank you for everything you have done for me and everything you are. I love you heart_

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_**No Substitute**_

The room was quiet. As he sat on an old fan-backed wooden chair, all Don could hear was his own breathing in the semi-darkness. The darkness itself was broken only by a lonely candle. He sniffed quietly.

As he shifted his hands, trapped under his legs, the old chair creaked ominously, fracturing the quiet. A brief grimace marred Don's features, and he looked up at his brother on the bed.

For hours Don had listened in silence, hoping that he had been wrong – it had happened before hadn't it? People had been thought dead, only to claw their way to freedom from their own graves, or stand up in bemusement from a mortuary slab. After all, they used to tie strings with bells attached to the end to the toes of the dead in graveyards, in case they inadvertently buried people alive.

If wishing could make things come true, Leo would have moved in the bed, would have got to his feet, perhaps even danced a jig.

Donatello was a turtle of science.

He knew that wishing alone did nothing.

He had never wanted to be more wrong.

It seemed infeasible now, the whole night. It was almost as thought it had passed so quickly that it had almost a dream-like quality to it. Don couldn't tell if he was still dreaming, and that this was an awful nightmare that burned him from the inside out like the hydrochloric acid he used to pickle steel, or whether it was the truth. The dreadful truth, the reality that deadened him inside, that had made an ache where once a heart had been.

They were warriors. They had always known there was a chance that one day, one of them would be carried home because he could no longer walk, because there was no breath left in his body.

Knowing that didn't stop it hurting. It didn't stop the situation being any more wrong.

It was…illogical.

Wasn't the leader supposed to hang behind and save his own self when it came to life or death battles?

Don smirked for just a fraction of a second, before his jaw trembled.

Leo would have baulked at such an idea.

Don himself would probably have had nothing less than an evil look cast in his direction for even suggesting such a thing.

There was no peace in the Turtle's home that night. Master Splinter had locked himself away in his quarters, disallowing entry. Raph had screamed and shouted and banged things until he was so sore he could barely move, and had eventually left the lair ensconced in his own dark cloud.

Don felt slightly guilty for leaving Mikey alone all this time. The youngest brother had been sitting outside the door to Master Splinter's room the last time he had checked, staring ahead blankly; a greyness to his skin made him look quite ill.

In a few minutes, Don would go to him – would do what he could to ease his grief, to bring sanity and logic to an insane and illogical situation.

Leo was dead.

Don's mind revolted at the words and struck them from his recent memory, encouraging tears to his eyes.

"Stupid…" Don croaked, rocking backwards and forwards slightly on his hands and eliciting more tired groans from the old chair.

"It's stupid.

"We didn't need to win that badly.

"We didn't need to fight that fight.

"_You_… _You _were stupid. I can't… I mean, how…

"I'm your _lieutenant_, your back-up – I can't do what you do, I'm not…

"I'm not like you.

"None of us are."

Don removed a reddened hand from beneath his leg and brushed a tear irritatedly away with the heel of his hand.

"Nobody's like you."

He stood, and the old chair muttered a sigh of relief. Moving silently to the bed, he sat down, taking in his brother's broken form with his eyes.

Don had done what he could to clean him up. Had run his hands over broken plastron and torn flesh. Had used epoxy glue to fix the worst of the damaged bone, so that his father didn't need to see it. Had sewn up wounds that no longer bled. Had washed his brother's face, wiping away the blood, sweat and tears that symbolised both his life, and the end of his life.

"You looked me in the face, while you were dying, _dying_, there in my arms and asked me to take your place.

"Nobody can take your place.

"It's not a contest, Leo.

"There isn't a row of Leos waiting for their chance to step up to the plate.

"You were the first and the last of your kind, Leo.

"The brothers you shared your life with know that, even if you never did."

Don couldn't control the tears any more; they ran down his face like the soldiers in a coup d'etat, against his will and he had not the strength to fight them.

"I feel like I've been betrayed. Like you chose the get-out clause.

"There is a chasm in this home, in this family – a huge hole that nobody can bear to talk about, and yet we'll go and sit around it for years before we make peace with it."

Even though his words were angry, Don's voice and his actions were not. As he spoke again, his hands slid beneath his dead brother's.

"When I was little – before I had a voice of my own, before I was strong enough to stand up to Raph when he was cruel, and Mikey when he would make fun, before I found a niche of my own – I wanted to be just like you.

"I wanted to be the one that stood up for righteousness and justice; I wanted to be the one to stand up to Raph when he picked on Mikey.

"I wanted to be _just like you_."

Don ran a calloused but gentle finger across Leo's forehead – where the line of his mask would once have lain.

He fell silent, letting his tears fall now without rebuke. He kept gently stroking Leo's forehead, as though the motion mesmerised him.

He found comfort, as he always had, in things that were rhythmic or repeated – mathematical equations, perfect formulae, the tapping of a hammer, the turn of an engine.

There was no comfort in the mad turn of events that had resulted in this lifeless, broken husk of his adored brother – the only one of his brothers who even came close to understanding him.

"I think Mikey needs me," Don whispered eventually, and wiped his tears with the back of his hand. He looked at them as though he'd never seen such a thing, as though the chemical make-up of water, mucin, lipids, lysozyme, lactoferrin, lipocalin, lacritin, immunoglobulins, glucose, urea, sodium and potassium was something unknown to him.

"There's…nothing more I can do for you," Don said, his voice hollow and empty as he got up from the bed. He took a breath as he headed for the door, deciding that he should not look back.

-fini-

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_Thank you so much for reading :) I appreciate that you've taken the time, and hope you enjoyed my little offering. I'm still working on those multi-parters but I'm currently being hit by drabble plot bunnies left, right and centre XD_


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